Are they getting sick of my complaining e-mails or is the social pressure working? I don’t know but this evening Dreamhost offered me a different way to authenticate myself, which I have now done! It will be hours before they reply of course, if not more.
I also spent some time rifling through all my old credit card bills and I couldn’t find any with Dreamhost charges on them. In fact, I thought I was paying them through PayPal. It’s been years since I fiddled with that account.